A Wedding at the Comfort Food Cafe. Debbie Johnson

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СКАЧАТЬ I just kind of … decided to forget about it. I realise that sounds insane, and it probably is, but it was in a different time. A different life. A long time ago, in a galaxy … well, at least a few hundred miles away.’

      ‘Well now you’ve remembered, tell me about it. I can’t believe you’re married! Does Van know? Does Finn know?’

      ‘Nobody here knows. Like I said, I chose to bury it. I barely knew myself. If it wasn’t for Becca and her Groucho glasses, I might have chosen to bury it forever. But … well. Here we are. Me, an old married woman, and you, my spinster sister. Sitting in the sunshine. Sharing a bottle of cider in a fair and equitable manner.’

      I reach out to grab it back, but she’s too fast, and holds it on the far side of her body so I can’t get to it without falling off the table. I shrug, and pull my cigarettes out of my jeans pocket instead. She crinkles her nose up in advance, and I say: ‘If you want to hear this story, you’ll have to tolerate the second-hand nicotine, okay?’

      I’ve been trying to stop smoking ever since I moved back to Budbury, our tiny corner of the Dorset coast. I’ve tried vaping, and patches, and exercise, but ultimately never seem quite able to shake off the habit. I’ll manage for a while, but then as soon as something vaguely stressful happens – like stubbing my toe, or discovering my mother has cancer, or pretty much everything in between – I start again.I’m a little bit broken, and the ciggies are an external sign, I suppose.

      I light up, and soothe myself with that first lovely inhale. I take two puffs, then stub it out on the tiny tin I carry around to use as a combined ashtray and butt collector. Nobody likes a litterbug.

      ‘That was quick,’ she says, blinking in surprise.

      ‘It’s my latest health kick,’ I reply, stashing the tin. ‘I only smoke a third of it. Expensive, admittedly – but you can’t put a price on good health, can you?’

      Willow rolls her eyes in a way that says she knows I’m stalling, and folds her arms across her chest. Very negative body language, that.

      ‘Okay, okay …’ I say, realising that she’s tucking her hands away to stop herself throttling me. ‘Well, it was genuinely a long time ago. Eight years ago, in fact, when I was young and carefree and often off my head on various pharmaceutical products. It was when I was living in Barcelona, before I came to London to do my studies and became a productive member of society.’

      ‘Is he Spanish?’ she asks, not unreasonably.

      ‘His mother is. His dad’s English. He’s called Seb – Sebastian, which in Spanish is almost the same, but kind of like “say-bass-ti-ann”.’

      ‘Okay. Say-bass-tian,’ Willow replies, trying it out for size. ‘So I know his name, and how to pronounce it. That’s a start. What about the rest – how did you meet him? Why did you marry him? Why didn’t it work?’

      I spot movement from inside the café, and have the feeling that everyone is trying to lip-read our conversation without appearing nosy. The downside of our cosy and close-knit community is that everyone is supremely interested in everyone else’s life. It’s like an interactive soap opera, with a lot of cream teas.

      ‘Erm … well, look, Willow, it’s complicated. I was younger. I was … wilder, remember? I left home when I was young. I spent years in South America and Asia. I was the Queen of the Backpacking Tribe. And that had its consequences – this may come as a surprise, but I have something of an addictive personality you know …’

      She snorts in amusement, and I shoot her a mock-angry look. Mock because I’ve just smoked a cigarette and have drunk approximately seventeen martinis and half a bottle of cider. The boat of normality has well and truly sailed.

      ‘And?’ she prompts, passing me the cider. Attagirl.

      ‘And … I suppose I became addicted to Seb as well. I was living in a tiny apartment above a restaurant in the Gothic quarter, working in a bar, and never seeing daylight. When I wasn’t working, I was drinking. And when I wasn’t drinking, I was clubbing. And when I wasn’t clubbing, I was sitting on the roof of the building, smoking dope. And when I wasn’t smoking dope, I was … well, you get the picture. I’d been on the road for so long, I think I’d forgotten how to live like a normal human being.’

      ‘Those who knew you when you were younger,’ Willow says gently, ‘might say that you never learned in the first place.’

      ‘You’re right,’ I reply, nodding. ‘That’s fair. I was always a little on the savage end of the spectrum. And for sure, spending so long living out of a rucksack and dossing down in hostels and only knowing people who were as transient as me didn’t help. I only ended up in Barcelona because I could speak some Spanish, and because I was trying – in my own messed up way – to get home. I’d been in Ghana – don’t ask – and someone offered me a lift all the way to Morocco. And from there I got a ferry to mainland Spain, and then Barcelona. Have you ever been?’

      She gives me a sideways glance that tells me that’s a silly question, and I nod.

      ‘No. I suppose you’ve been busy,’ I say. She’s younger than me, and stayed at home, and became the One Who Looked After Her Mother. Not that the rest of us had any choice – we had no idea Lynnie was ill, and as soon as we did, Van and I returned to help out. All the same, I do feel slightly guilty about it.

      ‘So. You’re living the life of a twenty-four-hour party person in Spain,’ she says, recapping the narrative. ‘How does that end up with you being married? Were you drunk?’

      ‘A lot of the time, yes – but not when we got married, no. There was a lot of paperwork, it was actually quite a long, drawn-out process to make it all legal. Kind of wish I’d skipped it now, but such is life – if you’re going to make a hideous, life-altering mistake, you might as well do it properly …’

      ‘Why was it such a mistake?’ she asks, and Iknowthat her over-active imagination is working hard to fill in the gaps with all kinds of terrors.

      ‘He didn’t sell me into slavery or keep me chained up in a cellar, don’t worry,’ I reply quickly. ‘Bad things happened, but nothing like that. I met Seb in the bar where I worked. He’d come in every night, and we’d flirt and chat and he’d buy me drinks. I’d drink the drinks. Then eventually he started staying after closing time, helping me clear up, and drink more drinks, and then we’d go dancing, and we’d take some pills, and then … well, I suppose it was a relationship based on lust and highs. The problem with highs is that there has to be a low at some point.’

      ‘What happened, Auburn?’

      ‘Shit happened, Willow,’ I snap back. I hadn’t been prepared for this when I woke up this morning, and I hadn’t been lying when I said I’d buried it all. It’s an episode of my life that was so crazy, so out of control, that I can’t really cope with revisiting it.

      ‘Okay,’ she replies quickly, reaching out and slipping her hand into mine, squeezing my fingers as she senses my genuine anguish. ‘It’s all right. Is it why you came back? Why you went back to college?’

      I gaze off at bay, and chew my lip, and squeeze her fingers in return.

      ‘That’s over-simplifying it, but in a way, yes. When things fell apart between us – pretty spectacularly, as you’d imagine – it made me think about my life. It made me think I’d made a mess of it. That I needed to change. СКАЧАТЬ